The half an hour lost during Day 1 of the rally was made up for later in the rally, as his stage times in the following days improved consistently. Given that this was the first WRC-sanctioned event on snow for Raikkonen, his quick-learning throughout the weekend can only boost his confidence for the events to come.
“We knew this was going to be a very difficult rally. We improved a bit all the time and that was our goal. Okay, I'm a bit disappointed to lose the time in the snow but that's a part of rallying,” said Raikkonen, who'll go to Mexico a lot more optimistic than before this weekend.
And that's because some of the rally outings he experienced back in his Ferrari days happened on gravel, the surface he'll encounter on the competition roads of Mexico.
“For sure everything should be a bit easier on the gravel that I know from the past a little bit. Everything I've done on snow before has always been a little bit tricky. We'll see how it goes in the test next week and hopefully we can improve in Mexico. We should be able to,” added the Finnish driver.
Despite his 30th finish in the overall classification of Rally Sweden, Citroen's Benoit Nogier admitted his delight over Kimi's performance.
“Kimi has made a remarkable start on his first world championship event with us. (...) Kimi got progressively quicker, but also remained calm in the face of all the new things that he had to learn,” said Nogier.
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